cem

There is this scene in The Fires of Heaven where Egwene has two illusory men she creates rape Nynaeve in Tel'aran'rhiod, supposedly to teach her the dangers of Tel'aran'rhiod, but by her admission, not my interpretation, the real reason is to distract Nynaeve so she doesn't discover that Egwene doesn't have permission from the Wise Ones to enter Tel'aran'rhiod on her own. Although I suppose it could be called half-rape, since she stops after Nynaeve starts begging Egwene, and crying. Later, she remarks on this scene and gets off on how she bent Nynaeve to her will, and thinks about how satisfying it was. That was the point I'd seen all the goodness I wanted to from Egwene. I think she's a disgusting person, and no, I don't think I'm being hard on her at all.

I get the feeling when you think of development you think of only the positive things. Which Egwene doesn't really have much of, in my opinion. Until Falme, Egwene is basically a child, like the rest of the Two Rivers folk. Being made damane is, IMO, what gets her out of childhood. She does what Nynaeve tells her to, more or less, until the third book, but after that she starts behaving as her equal. And from the Wise Ones, she learns to be an effective bully and a sadist, which are what she stays until the end, and maybe arrogance though she had that in abundance to begin with. Granted, these aren't things a person should aspire to, but it is progress. Really, I've always thought Egwene was a hero, so to speak, because of circumstances and proximity. In another story, she'd have made a fine villain.

I agree with the latter, but disagree with the former. She made the other Aes Sedai accept her in the Tower, but there wasn't much as far as development as a character went, just more experience. So I'm with you there. But I think her real growing up moments were being made damane, training with the Wise Ones, and training with Siuan. She was what she was after that, and applied it for the rest of the series. Her developments were made in leaps and bounds kinda like Perrin, as opposed to Rand who just went crazier and crazier with each book or Mat who was born awesome.

Forget all this magic stuff. What the Lord Ruler truly needs is a copy of the Evil Overlord List. So he can protect himself against teenage girls. Instead of bragging about like a megalomaniac.

For me, the only parts that I didn't love were the climactic scenes you mention. I've read everything Weeks has written and the same thing has been true for all of his books. I liked both the Night Angel and the Lightbringer, the latter much more so, but in both series I always felt the climaxes were drawn out too much. I don't think I could explain what exactly about them bothers me. I don't really know it myself to be honest. Weeks' endings just don't seem to work for me.

http://www.outerplaces.com/universe/technology/item/5209-the-science-behind-frozen-princess-elsa-is-comparable-to-an-a-bomb Elsa is like a tiny god guys. Kaladin would be an utter moron to get into that fight.

Rea Siluz

Hoid's sword is probably an Awakened sword like Nightblood. I'm guessing that's what Brandon refers to. Which, if true, would make Nightblood not quite so unique anymore.

It's still just magical super glue, man. True enough Full Lashing is effective against muggles, but I'm really skeptical if a Shardplate can be Full-Lashed (we need a better verb for this). So, it may have no effect whatsoever on a full-blown Skybreaker. Even if that's not the case, any fight between a Windrunner and a Skybreaker is as likely to be in the air as on the ground, where Full Lashing is not going to do jack since it needs a surface to work with. We don't know exactly how Division Surge works, but there are hints in the books that it allows the Surgebinder to melt or burn stuff. Seems like a more useful power, and with wider possible uses. Windrunner spidey-sense is sweet, sure, but all spren give their bondmates powers. We don't know what ability the highspren give, so it doesn't seem fair to make that comparison at this point. For all we know, it's even better than what honorspren give. Though, I still believe Elsecallers are the most powerful order. "Most powerful" isn't the same thing as "who can kick most butt." I'll take the ability to create any object you want and fast travel over any of those fancy powers.

Can someone PM me those White Sand Q&As please?

Another difference between Kaladin and Shallan is that Kaladin had to wait till the Third Ideal to summon Syl as a weapon, while Shallan did it before that. I think there was WoB that Shallan was at the Fourth Ideal as of the end of WoR. IIRC, that would mean she summoned Patternblade while she was at the Second Ideal, since she spoke two Truths in tWoK and WoR. I don't disagree with fishiness. But maybe these are because Syl had to come to the Physical Realm on her own, while Pattern had the support of his people. Or maybe it works differently with different spren, Cryptics and honorspren are very, very different from one another after all.

I'm not sure that trauma is absolutely necessary to begin the bond. Kaladin was also bonded, albeit very loosely, to Syl before he got conscripted and even before Wistiow's death. I guess it's more of a prerequisite for progression to full Radiant-hood. A little change to the soul is fine without being it cracked, so to speak. But if you want more, then bad things need to happen to you first.

Go to your profile (top right), your link will be at the bottom of the box that has details, birthday, and activity. Here's mine: https://www.goodreads.com/cemonal

I did. Blood Song last year, Tower Lord at the release day. Absolutely loved Blood Song. But I thought Tower Lord was inferior to it in many ways. I think it suffered from having multiple PoVs. Frentis' plot was not all that interesting after a certain event. Reva was a terrible character. Not just a character I didn't like, but simply a bad character. And I hated that damnedest cliffhanger. On the flip side, Vaelin's PoVs were still amazing and Lyrna's were pretty good too.

She does actually lose her powers.

If you don't want sex scenes, you should not even go near Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle series. There is a disgusting amount of rape happening on screen. So much so I literally considered smashing my e-book reader to the wall while reading it. There is a fair amount of consensual sex as well. Which, for the most part, doesn't affect the plot at all. I thought it got pretty boring after a while. That is one of the reasons I haven't enjoyed the series as much as I probably would otherwise. The other being that bumpkin accent everybody speaks with. Oh, and Anthony Ryan's Raven's Shadow is fine. I mean the main character is a warrior-monk with a chastity oath after all.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.

1. The Dresden Files 2. The Wheel of Time 3. The Stormlight Archive 4. The Kingkiller Chronicles (Though I swear if Rothfuss doesn't finish the third book by 2015, I'll do ... something, dunno what) 5. Raven's Shadow

Anthony Ryan's Blood Song is just amazing. Its sequel Tower Lord is not as good, but still good. You'll probably love Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles series as most people do. Start with either of these, then switch to Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series. Though I warn you, Butcher wasn't one tenth the writer he is today when he started the series, so it's a bit tough to get through the first three books but it's definitely worth it.

Gender of the author only matters to me if I'm buying urban fantasy. Male authors don't seem to write as many Twilight clone crap as female ones. Or at least they do, but don't get published. So female authors get more scrutiny from me. And if I see the words "sexy" and "vampire" in the blurb, I just run away screaming. Because ick.

This. I would also like to add that she is a character that is defined too much by her magical abilities. Much of what she does is a result of her Lightweaving and Memory themselves, rather than a result of the way she chooses to employ those abilities. Anyone with the same powers can do the same stuff without difficulty. When she isn't using her powers, other people often pretend to be morons so Shallan can shine. I am most specifically talking about the highprince meeting and the Oathgate scenes in WoR, neither of which felt particularly realistic to me. I think Jasnah wasn't in the book much, because Shallan could never step out of her shadow. I thought she was mostly a blank sheet with good potential in tWoK, but I can't say I enjoyed her progression in WoR. As she is now, I don't hate or love her. She is simply a part of the series that needs to be tolerated and that I am not too much emotionally invested in. Oh, and I'm male, if it matters.

WoR cover looks awesome. Love the Shardspear and Szeth. Not to derail the topic, I think the Turkish tWoK cover can safely claim to be the lamest cover. Someone was, apparently, lazy:

http://coppermind.net/wiki/User:Cem#Kaladin.27s_timeline Here's Kaladin's early life timeline. As far as I can tell, that chapter takes place at the earlier months of 1168. Gavilar dies in 1167.

Well, I don't really agree two murders can ever be justly punished with reassignment to another town, but okay, I'll agree that the case could be made. Freedom of speech and all that. Although if that was the case, I don't see why Dalinar argued for Roshone being a tenner. I interpret this as that was the fitting punishment in the Alethi law, but Dalinar and co. didn't have the spine to uphold the law. Look, you claim that he could've chosen somebody else and the same thing would've happened. Sure, anything is possible. And I agree, then, that would have been an honest mistake, and I wouldn't blame Dalinar for it. We all make mistakes. But that's not the case here. Roshone is a known scumbag. Did anyone believe for a second that he was going to turn his life around and be a responsible and benevolent leader to his people? I can't believe they could possibly be that stupid. This is not just a bad decision, it is negligence, abandonment of duty, and corruption. As far as Lirin's crimes go, the punishment of thievery is not the forcible conscription of the thief's son. That was just Roshone abusing his power to get revenge for his own son's death. For which, the blame falls on the crown for making a murderer the citylord. And let's not forget it wasn't only Lirin that suffered under Roshone, it is the whole town. They were around fifteen or seventeen, I think. And one grown man enlisted, too. Kaladin couldn't replace Tien, because that would've been less dramatic and made a worse story. But from an in-world perspective, I don't think the problem was that Kaladin couldn't replace Tien so much as it was that no one had the authority to override Roshone's decision, and Amaram didn't care enough about one darkeyes life to make a big deal of it.